I Voted Saxon!

Oh, Tablet Tablet Tablet. If you’ve spent more than five minutes on the net this week you would of heard the rumours and gossip over the “Apple Tablet” that’s being announced tomorrow. Typical Apple, there’s been no official announcement as yet, but there’s book publishers talking about it on TV (and really, that guy doesn’t deserve the backlash he’s getting. it’s not like he hasn’t said something the rest of the world already knows anyways..) so it’s pretty much a given at this point. Apple fanbois are all excited – these official announcements are like Christmas to them. I shall be wary at this point. Will it “change the history of tech forever like the iphone” like some are hyping?? I’m not too sure. Here’s my two cents anyways..

The Apple ebook reader.

Withe the early slip by the McGraw Hill guy yesterday, this much is certain. Should the Amazon people be worried? I say yes. Although it may not have the battery power and life of the kindle, this thing will be in colour, have more options than the kindle software and be able to display graphics with ease. Amazon have pretty much failed when it comes to international support of the Kindle. Only recently have they finally made an international version, and the content available outside of the US is pitiful. Apple will surely want to give this to everywhere there is an imac or iphone available. This means the “ebook store” will most definitely stock way more overseas and get way more sales. I know it’s a tricky legal battle uphill to please all publishers across the globe, but they did it with the music industry AND the TV networks, this will be a piece of cake for them at this point.

Also, with the better colour options and graphics, this could very well work for not only newspapers, but for magazines as well. Imagine that – having a decent price to pay for your magazines instead of the 20 plus dollars so you can get the NME imported from the UK… Also with comics – the big two have been experimenting with online comics for a little while – not everyone has access to a decent comic book store (when I was into it, i used to order online from a store in Sydney, 1000ks away…) comic scenes on bittorrent are getting away with murder, it would be good to get access to some of the archives, that some may want to read but not fork over the big bucks on ebay just so they can read the origins of their favourite superhero…

A Macbook Replacement ??

I’m going to go a little off centre here – what about the portable computer market? Apple have always said they weren’t into that whole thing. Still, I would love a smaller Macbook so I can take it away with me. Sure, 13 inch laptop isn’t exactly HUGE, but when you’re going away the smaller the better. If they offer options to say, plug in USB hard discs, or DVD drives, could it be a basic simple to use computer when going away on holidays?? I eventually need a smaller machine for my next holiday, and the ol’ eeepc just doesn’t cut it in the long run. It’s the perfect size but the processor power struggles with Win XP, and ubuntu is still sadly a joke in many ways. Sure, it won’t be able to run imovie or make a DVD, but that’s not what I want it for. I’d like it to have wifi (and the option to tether with my iphone), an option for external HDDs (mainly so I can drag my videos off of my handycam when it gets full, and for the odd film I can’t fit on it ) and some simple, straight forward web browsing, email, itunes access etc. Iphone OS of some sort is going to run on this, so the apps can probably be made for stuff like this, and it would be very handy to pull out the slim tablet and start to type something out in a word file using the on screen keyboard… I don’t need all the power of a macbook to do these things. That’s why I have an imac for.

I suppose we shall see tomorrow. I like a good tech announcement, but please forgive me if I don’t wet myself and giggle at some of the “over-enthusiastic” people around the internets at the moment. I do like my tech toys, but still own PCs, Xbox 360 and whatnot. I love all tech.